Before He Created His Vibrant Drip Paintings, Jackson Pollock Took Inspiration From Pablo Picasso

Jackson Pollock is famous for creating expressive and dynamic drip paintings that explore movement and masculinity. Before that, however, the American artist spent years experimenting with other styles.

The artworks Pollock painted during his early career were quite different from those that would later garner international acclaim. Now, an exhibition in France is spotlighting paintings from this lesser-known chapter of Pollock’s artistic development—and works by artists who inspired him, such as Pablo Picasso.

“Jackson Pollock: The Early Years” is currently on display at the Picasso Museum in Paris. Featuring about 100 artworks, the show focuses on the period between 1938 (when Pollock started experimenting with new styles) and 1947 (when he made his first drip paintings).

“The aim is to give a detailed account of these years, which were both the laboratory of his work and of his myth, by restoring the artistic and intellectual context from which both were nourished,” says the museum in a statement.

Born in Wyoming in 1912, Pollock was the youngest of five boys. The family, which struggled financially, was always on the move, and Pollock grew up mostly in Arizona and California. When he was 18, he moved across the country to join his older brother Charles at the Art Students League in New York, where he spent years absorbing the city’s vibrant cultural scene.

Pollock’s brother introduced him to Picasso’s art, as exhibition co-curator Joanne Snrech explains, per Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Eventually, he was able to examine many of the Spanish painter’s works in person.

“Pollock was very sensitive to the work of Picasso, particularly at the end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s, after having seen Picasso’s Guernica [1937], along with a large body of his work and preparatory drawings, in a major 1939 [Museum of Modern Art] exhibition, and just prior to that, a show at New York’s Valentine Gallery,” co-curator Orane Stalpers tells Artnet’s Devorah Lauter. “In Pollock’s work, we can see how he deconstructed figures and used geometrical lines to evoke these forms from Picasso’s oeuvre.”

In addition to Picasso, the exhibition examines Pollock’s other early influences as he dabbled in Surrealism, studied Mexican muralists and created psychoanalytic drawings on the advice of his therapist. The show features a variety of artists who played pivotal roles in Pollock’s success, including John D. Graham, André Masson, Janet Sobel and Pollock’s wife, Lee Krasner.

While it may seem unusual for the Picasso Museum to stage a Pollock show, the exhibition is part of an effort to demonstrate the sprawling influence that the Cubist painter has had on artists all over the world.

“In this way, it is possible to open up the museum to other figures and other objects, and to build around Picasso multiple approaches, both cultural and artistic, that are relevant to our own times,” says Cécile Debray, president of the Picasso Museum, in the statement.

“Jackson Pollock: The Early Years,” is on view at the Picasso Museum in Paris through January 19, 2025.

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.